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zaphod12

672 karma · joined November 21, 2016

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zaphod12··on Beware Management Consultants
and here I thought it was from the Nation of Iceland and was very impressed by the volume of their anti-management consultant stance.
zaphod12··on Meta Files Patent for Facial Recognition, Automatic Recording of People
It's meta - they've been caught doing untoward things at virtually every opportunity. Are you looking for something specific, like the creation of virtual CSAM with them or something? I'm fine with starting out by giving people/companies the benefit of the doubt I guess, but once they have shown you their true colors, you should listen.
zaphod12··on Confidential submission of draft S-1 to the SEC
Yeah that started a week ago....
zaphod12··on New York to tax luxury second homes in NYC
NYS already has tax breaks for one's primary residence which varies by income and a tax on the sale of homes >$1Mil. Given how entrenched those are, I have trouble imagining a way in which this new tax is incongruous with existing rules.
zaphod12··on Ensu – Ente’s Local LLM app
if it helps, I've used ente for a year and I really like it.
zaphod12··on Google boss says AI investment boom has 'elements of irrationality'
your point isn't necessarily wrong, but using an NYPL overview of tenements which all pre-date WWII to exemplify anything about the 1960s in NYC is disingenuous.
zaphod12··on Evaluating the impact of AI on the labor market: Current state of affairs
One spot I really find this surprising is call center - but maybe majority of those folks are outside of the US or were reassigned
zaphod12··on The FTC puts off enforcing its 'click-to-cancel' rule
most credit cards allow you to create a temporary card number. Create one, set it to be the billing method, and then revoke it. crazy that we need to resort to that sort of thing, but it does work!
zaphod12··on Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction
I think a lot of people misunderstand the statement 'I take responsibility.' They are not actually taking responsibility for the company's situation. They are owning the decision to make these layoffs.
zaphod12··on Intel is trucking a 916k-pound 'Super Load' across Ohio to its new fab
semiconductor manufacturing is highly skilled - ie the folks over seas were already well paid. It was a lot more about approvals, permissions, etc, than wages with this manufacturing area. It shouldn't have a huge impact.
zaphod12··on Deaf girl is cured in world first gene therapy trial
I can assure you that regeneron pays very well, including significant equity and has absolutely fantastic benefits. Software developers probably get more at door dash (it isn't bad by any means, but they aren't "the talent" at regeneron after all), but folks involved in the science and trials are doing very well.
zaphod12··on Man who mass-extorted psychotherapy patients gets six years
Not looking to argue directly about the punishment, but I think it's quite clear that this individuals is ALREADY a hardened, bitter criminal with hacking skills and needs no assistance on that score.
zaphod12··on The Internet Archive's last-ditch effort to save itself
I suspect this is likely a violation of agreements, but regardless it absolutely does not produce a readable ebook
zaphod12··on Solar is beginning to sunset natural gas use in Texas
That's what is so frustrating about people who oppose renewables - it's super simple capitalism at work. Once prices came down enough, why would you want to have to PAY for the fuel your power plant uses?! Install it and let it go!

This is also what's killed coal so effectively - why would any company want to provide all of those good paying jobs when they just don't have to! (this pertains to NG and other fuels, too - they are just so much less human intensive to extract once the infrastructure is established)

zaphod12··on Global cancer cases will jump 77% by 2050, WHO report estimates
Perhaps some, but only a small amount... current targets are hitting between 8.4-9.5 billion by 2050 (some estimates are we'd have already hit peak and be going down)! At about 8 billion today, we're talking between a 5% and an 18ish% increase. Either way much less than the increase in cancer diagnosis incidence.
zaphod12··on Read the Chronicles of Narnia in Publication Order (2018)
First mention of Hornblower I've ever come across on this forum! Read the whole series as a kiddo/tween in chronological order (still remember how freaking disappointing Hornblower during the crisis was as someone who had no idea it was unfinished..). First few books took a while to get through and I figured I was too young but maybe they just weren't that enthralling!
zaphod12··on Chamberlain blocks smart garage door opener from working with smart homes
bought a MyQ - tossed it in the trash after 2 months. Even 2 years ago it was clearly designed as a tie in for Amazon Key, which i do not want.

Bought a Tailwind - it's glorious. No batteries, tons of integrations, the bluetooth+android to open/close automatically is crazy solid (doesn't work with ios sadly, but you can buy a fob).

zaphod12··on TikTok is changing the way books are recommended and sold
hmm, I know people brag about books they haven't actually read, but Book #3 of the Atlas Series is not out until January. (kidding, I assume it's a typo)

Not actually on Booktok myself, but if it's pushing people towards R.F. Kuang and Susanna Clark then it's a-ok by me - read the Poppy War series while you wait for The Atlas Complex.

zaphod12··on 12 years since Saab’s bankruptcy: Secret NEVS electric cars revealed
Devastatingly, mine is stuck and i cannot unstick it! Thankfully the 2005 9-3 has another cup holder, but i miss the pop out.
zaphod12··on America will soon see a wave of bank mergers?
Where did you get these numbers? It's wrong and presents a misleading picture of a 10x implosion in 2008. There were never even close to 31k banks in the USA. It peaked at about 14k back in the '80s and has been going down ever since. It did drop precipitously after the 2008 crises, going from around 7K banks to today around 4500 banks, but this is a very far cry from 31k to 3k.

https://banks.data.fdic.gov/explore/historical?displayFields...

zaphod12··on I wanted a beautiful computer and couldn't find one, so I made my own
Overall this is a cool project. Not personally my favorite aesthetic, but super cool work.

I take issue with his characterization of japanese vs. western homes, though. Western homes are typically expected to be renovated over and over and last many many decades. Though the most modern ones may not last you 100, ask any buyer and they'll say they expect it to appreciate in value, be renovated and resold to someone else with no clear end date.

Most homes in japan depreciate and are torn down in 20-30 years. Buyers want new homes. https://www.archdaily.com/980830/built-to-not-last-the-japan...

yeah it doesn't jibe with a lot of folk's expectations...

zaphod12··on Ask HN: Has anyone started over outside of tech?
hold up...you can't just say 'FAA grounded me for life' without sharing something about that story! I've never heard of anything like it...

Going straight to helicopters without flying airplanes first is not a typical path.

zaphod12··on I quit infosec and I couldn't be happier
I agree that is it more lucrative that way. But I super disagree with the happiness part. I don't know anyone working at an IT security company, but know many many lawyers and a handful of accountants. 90% of them ditched big law firms/Big 4 accounting firms as soon as their resume was sufficient to do so because the quality of life was terrible. Very very long hours, demanding clients and political atmospheres (As you go up) around bringing in business. By and large the folks that stayed are workaholics who highly valued money and status.

1 good friend of mine, was a super driven lawyer at a huge world-class firm in NYC. She got cancer, and had to take a leave. Fortunately she recovered fully and quit basically the first moment she got back. This isn't one of those 'she left to follow her passion in the arts' cases - she LOVES being a lawyer, but she realized she wasn't living a life. Now she's in-house at a multi-national brewing company.

Anyhow, all that to say - you may be more valued, but it's much easier to be the client!

zaphod12··on Amazon removes books from Kindle Unlimited after they appear on pirate sites
Yeah it was 1984. Which was almost too much and i don't know nobody internally balked at it simply to refuse being that deeply ironic. Or they thought it was hilarious, which I suppose is a possibility.
zaphod12··on Amazon has radically transformed small businesses in both the U.S. and China
There is one single really key difference. Walmart takes responsibility for the products they put in their store. That they are genuine and represented as they are. They squeezed sellers, encouraged moves to china and all of that, but they aren't a marketplace - they are a store. Amazon has abrogated all responsibility in that area and pretended they are the equivalent of the open field on which a flea market is set up.
zaphod12··on Apple sued by two women over AirTag stalking
This is because their is a federal law that says gun companies aren't liable. Prior to the passing of this law, the NRA argued that without it, gun companies would all go out of business because they'd be sued into oblivion.

The families of the children murdered at Sandy Hook have sued gun companies and succeeded (at least to some degree, they settled) through a workaround of the federal law. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/15/nyregion/sandy-hook-famil...

zaphod12··on GE buys out entire NYT print paper in historic first
key to this is 'print,' though. NYT reaches far more people digitally these days - I think it's around 10 million. (and then plenty of folks see articles that aren't subscribing.
zaphod12··on Ask HN: How long till outages if Big Tech employees suddenly got Thanos-snapped?
Depends...you could rebalance to stay up forever, but just slow anything new at all.

Your biggest issue is the data center. A lot of folks forget about this stuff, but hard drives are constantly dying, servers go bad or crash, heck even the ac needs maintenance (though that's contracted out I'm sure). None of that is glorious, but it's critical. The major systems are very very reliable in the face of a few hardware failures, but give it a couple of months of falling behind on maintenance and it would all crumble.

zaphod12··on Is wine fake?
If it's french wine, then import costs is the biggest...taxes and tariffs, but also transport costs and distribution in the US all taking a cut.

For wines in a top US region, you wind up paying a ton of money for the mortgage on the land, too.

zaphod12··on How did NPR’s pre-election poll get things so so so wrong?
Yes absolutely. In 2010 - Obama's first midterm - republicans gained like 64 seats in the house. It was a massacre for anything with a D next to their name on the ballot, expect in the most solidly blue locales. This was not like that at all. More of a regression to the mean in most places.
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